


The Ride Back From Neptune's Net

by fhsa_archivist



Category: Fast and the Furious Series
Genre: Alternate Universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-03-17
Updated: 2005-03-17
Packaged: 2019-02-05 18:44:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,823
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12800100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fhsa_archivist/pseuds/fhsa_archivist
Summary: the conversation on the road back from Neptune's Net





	The Ride Back From Neptune's Net

**Author's Note:**

> Note from Haven, the archivist: This story was originally archived at [Fandom Haven Story Archive (FHSA)](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Fandom_Haven_Story_Archive), was scheduled to shut down at the end of 2016. To preserve the archive, I began working with the OTW to transfer the stories to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in November 2017. If you are this creator and the work hasn't transferred to your AO3 account, please contact me using the e-mail address on [Fandom Haven Story Archive collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/fhsa/profile).

"...So anyway your handling is great. Handling is your strong suit, what you need to work on is speed, y'know speed, the way you win? Speed is all about two things on a straightaway: timing, timing and what's the second thing?"

 

"Didn't realize there was going to be a quiz." Brian mumbled.

 

Dom snapped his fingers. "Stay alert, kid, you might learn something. The second thing is Attitude. Capital A."

 

Brian nodded, enthralled in the rhythm of Dom's voice. The hot sun combined with a full stomach was making him want to curl up and nap in the passenger seat. If Dom would just keep talking, the rumble of his voice blending with the hum of the engine, Brian could just drift away.

 

It was a dangerous thing to be so relaxed with your suspect. But the gratification of having a timeline, something to keep Tanner and Bilkins off his back and the sheer pleasure having Dom's presence to himself made him feel like a dog having his ears scratched. He never wanted the afternoon to end. He was glad that Dom had decided to take the "scenic route" back home. They had the canyon road back to Highway 101 almost all to themselves.

 

"Attitude. Capital A...Thanks, coach. I'll remember that for the big game on Saturday."

 

Dom narrowed his eyes at Brian's semi-recumbent form. He thwacked Brian's upper arm with what was probably meant as a friendly punch. Brian's left arm was promptly numb from the elbow down.

 

"Seriously, jockstrap, you could be good at this. You being the ball? Visualizing the win?"

 

"I guess."

 

"Well, forget that shit. You can't be at the finish line in your head, kissing the girls, collecting the benjamins when your ass is back getting blown away by exhaust. You can't think like that. Listen to your breathing and tick off the seconds. Keep the time in your head and act, don't react. You've got to make all your decisions before the race, so no one surprises you. Look, you surf, right?"

 

"Not so much anymore, but yeah. What's your point?"

 

Dom bobbed his head, "How do you know which wave to catch? How do you know when to stand up?"

 

"I dunno, you just know...it's instinct."

 

"Instinct." Dom pointed one finger straight up. "The most powerful force of nature. Follow your instincts and you'll never overthink and punch your Nos too fast. Listen to the engine, Grasshopper. It will tell you when it needs the juice."

 

"You make it sound so easy," Brian teased.

 

"It is easy," Dom shot Brian his own teasing look. "If you have the right attitude, smartass."

 

Brian grinned and stretched. He was still idly pondering Dom's last words from the restaurant. Then, we'll talk. After Race Wars. Part of him couldn't help fantasizing what would they talk about. He pushed it away. Right now, he didn't want to plan or think of contingencies. Right now, he wanted to just...be. He was in that danger zone of relaxation where people have a tendency to run off at the mouth.

 

"So it's hard to believe that we're only thirty miles from L.A.," Brian paused. "Feels like another universe."

 

Dom nodded slowly. The hills streamed out around them, burned gold by the summer sun.

 

"Thing is..." Brian continued. "Only works going north. Going south is just same old, same old..."

 

"What's thirty miles south of L.A.?" Dom cut in.

 

"Oh, you know, Long Beach," Brian responded in the deadest of deadpan. "The most beautiful city on the face of the planet."

 

Brian peeked casually out of the corner of his eyes. It had worked. Dom was silently shaking with laughter. The low rumble of his chuckles came a second later like a sonic boom. Brian bit the outside corner of his lip with pleasure. It was great to make Dom laugh.

 

"So it only works going north, huh?" Dom asked. "I guess Malibu is a world apart from our little corner of paradise." Dom smiled widely and Brian basked in it.

"Great shrimp, though," Brian acknowledged. "Thanks again, by the way."

 

Dom flicked his thanks away with the tips of his fingers.

 

"And thirty miles after that, you have Oxnard," Brian continued, still playing for laughs. "The nineteenth century."

 

"The women in Oxnard are too strange for me," Dom shuddered theatrically.

"What do you mean?"

 

Dom's lips twisted in a puzzled frown and he shook his head. "Hard to put your finger on it. They have really weird opinions."

 

Brian shrugged, "I'll stay away then. And thirty miles after that..." He suddenly realized that he'd just led them onto conversational quicksand. Brian fell silent and hoped Dom wasn't really paying attention.

 

Dom cocked his head at him, looking at him over the tops of his sunglasses. "Thirty miles after that?"

 

"Buellton?" Brian hedged.

 

Dom tilted his head back and forth in that odd way he had. As if he were literally weighing your words in his ears. "Not quite."

 

Brian sighed as he realized that Dom wasn't going to let it go. "Lompoc." Brian said in a low voice.

 

"That wasn't so hard to say now, was it?"

 

"Harder to do than say, I guess," Brian wondered as he said it, if he'd be walking back home.

 

Dom chuckled and then went quiet for a long time and Brian's misery grew with every second. He never wanted to force any confessions from Dom, but part of him craved any nugget of knowledge that Dom doled out. Dom was...open with him in a way that Brian knew was unique. Dom had spoken to him yesterday about his father in the garage with the light gilding his skin. While Dom had confessed, Brian had felt as if he was in the room with some rare and wonderful animal. He hadn't moved a muscle.

 

"I never really..." Dom trailed off. "I mean for you, I guess it would have been similar. When you're young, even a week can feel like forever. I didn't know if I was going to be paroled and every breath I took inside felt like my life rotting away."

 

Brian rubbed his hand over his face and nodded. Two years, to a person accustomed to measuring their life in ten-second increments. "That must have been the worst."

 

"Maybe," Dom said cryptically.

 

Dom took refuge in silence and scanned the hills around him as if to remind himself that he was currently master of his fate.

 

"I hear the big L's harder than Atascadero or King City," Brian said evenly, without a hint of curiosity, his eyes focused on the horizon.

 

"Hard?" Dom looked up at a traffic helicopter buzzing past. "They could have made a Discovery special on it. Bunch of animals."

 

Yeah, you tell yourself that. Dom had gone in thinking that he knew the difference between right and wrong, that he was a decent judge when the edges got blurry. It had only taken him a week to realize that good and bad wasn't the point. That prison blurred the lines between man and beast.

 

What had he told Brian a few minutes ago? Instinct, the most powerful force of nature. Instinct had been all he had inside. There were no rules.

 

"Why didn't you go Ad Seg?" Dom was going to have to learn how Brian managed to ask a question without sounding curious in the least.

 

"That's for citizens. Not for me."

 

The first guy who leered at him in the shower, Dom had rabbit punched him right in the Adam's apple. That was pure instinct. But it was his choice to stare down the others, sneering, his choice to kick the downed punk savagely. What echoed in his head as he fractured eight of the guy's ribs was show them, show them, show them.

 

Show them all that he was as ice cold and stone hard as he appeared to be. But I made other choices, his internal voice sounded suspiciously whiny. Dom remembered leaving the weight room when certain people arrived, just to save the aggravation. He remembered giving some guy his sandwich when some thugs had snatched the poor kid's tray even while his own hunger made his head ache. He occasionally dreamt about his second-to-last cellmate who had vaguely resembled Brian. He shied away from that thought immediately. Dom rubbed his hand over his eyes trying to block out the memory of a kneeling form, darkened wet lips shining in the wan light from the end of the cellblock.

 

Hoarse whispered voice, let me, D, it's okay. I want to.

 

Instinct: Fighting, fleeing, feeding, fucking, forgetting.

 

Dom needed to think about something else, pronto.

 

"You know, they tell me that Arizona's no picnic, even for juvenile offenders. Boot camp, isn't it?"

 

"Yup," Brian

 

"What was the worst part for you?" Dom spoke so softly, Brian had to lean in to catch it. Dom's eyes had gone hooded but his fingers lightly tapped a drumbeat on the steering wheel. Even though his face was distant, Brian had no doubt that Dom was right here with him. He got the vague sense that Dom had asked a question while being afraid of the answer.

 

"You mean apart from the lousy food, the crappy conversation, the heat, the noise and the getting up at the asscrack of dawn?"

 

One corner of Dom's lips twisted down while the other twitched upward. "If I ever doubted you..."

 

"The worst part was the clothes," Brian interrupted. "Never fit. I was 15, 16, 17 years old. My own mother couldn't keep me in clothes that fit. The state wasn't exactly making that extra effort to make sure my ass was covered, you know what I mean?"

 

Dom tried to picture Brian at 15. Skinnier. Gawkier. Maybe with longer hair. In a uniform that left his ankles and wrists bare. Pulled tight over the shoulders, maybe pinching at the crotch. He winced in sympathy.

 

Dom relaxed very slightly. If only there had been someone like Brian in Lompoc. Someone to protect, defend, advise; a compass that he could have wrapped himself around. Things might have been different. Things would have been different.

"Brian," Dom starts, "Did you ever go Ad Seg...?" But there's no way he can finish that question, what it implies.

 

"Nah, man," Brian is dismissive, gazing off into the far distance. He turns back with the slightest hint of a grin. "It's for citizens. Not for me. I wasn't sure if I could stay straight. And I didn't want that hanging over my head, if I had to go back inside."

 

Silence returns. Not even friends can talk the way he wants to talk to Brian. They hit a straightaway and Dom spares a long moment to look into Brian's eyes. Those clear, sky-blue eyes don't even try to hide the pain at their edges.

 

After Race Wars. Maybe one day, they'll talk.


End file.
